Search

Helen Gurley Brown, legendary editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine (1965-1997), died yesterday. She was 90 years old. Admittedly, I knew nothing of the legacy of the woman who would be responsible for informing and influencing my views about femininity, sex and sexuality in the media. My earliest relationship with Cosmopolitan Magazine amounted to annual purchases in January to read the Bedside Astrologer as if it were the mystical diving agent to determine what my year in relationships would garner.

Still, Brown’s Cosmopolitan shifted the culture around lady magazines, removing the taboo around frank talk about sex and desire that the women of Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce certainly could appreciate. Brown’s covers were graced by voluptuous models, celebrities and her taglines scandalized (all of which according to Brown, were written by her husband).

Brown even penned a book titled, ‘Having It All’ which is a lightening rod for a circular conversation among women around privilege and the work/life balance. Her own life as chronicled in the 1982 book was a veritable hybrid of Holly Golightly and Jay Gatsby, and as American a narrative as ever, a self made woman who overcame her low economic circumstance and achieved great success. Brown never had children. Brown felt she was a feminist, and in many ways the forbearer to sex positive feminism as Irin Carmon notes:

In “Bad Girls Go Everywhere,” Gurley Brown’s biographer, Jennifer Scanlon represents Gurley Brown as a feminist whose attitudes towards sex prefigured “sex positive” feminism. That included acknowledging female desire, particularly a desire for men’s bodies. Gurley’s stubborn refusal to “demonize” men, or have any unpleasantness at all in her magazine, kept her at loggerheads with many second wavers; she saw it as simply practical. “I acknowledge that men keep women back,” Gurley Brown wrote, “but since sex is terrific and it comes from men, you can’t rule men out of this world and say they’re all terrible and rotten, because you’re going to need them for your own purposes.”

Being a modern woman in America means that we’re constantly negotiating with our bodies in relationship with men, women, the mirror, fixed culture morays and norms about our bodies, clothing… you get the picture. Even in this strange-weird and unfortunate political climate where more than 40 years after Brown took the helm of Cosmo to inform the male world that perhaps we too have an appetite beyond the perfect graham cracker crust for key lime pies (admittedly might make one think of an orgasm, but obviously, still pales to the actual thing) we’re still fighting for our right to protect what happens in our vagina, let along say ‘vagina’.

SYREETA MCFADDEN is a Brooklyn based writer, photographer and adjunct professor of English. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches and Storyscape Journal. She is the managing editor of the online literary magazine, Union Station, and a co-curator of Poets in Unexpected Places. You can follow her on Twitter @reetamac.

Syreeta McFadden is a contributing opinion writer for The Guardian US and an editor of Union Station Magazine.

In case you’re in need of some rage to fuel your Tuesday, watch this video of an interview Senator Rand Paul did with CNBC Anchor Kelly Evans yesterday. Pressed by Evans on the consequences of his proposal to give companies a temporary tax holiday, Paul literally shushed her and told her to “calm down a bit.”

I’m with Melissa: I cannot imagine Paul doing this to a male interviewer — at least not in such a patronizing way. And I also can’t imagine male anchor apologizing to a defensive and cranky guest, which Evans does three times after his outburst. Despite this conciliatory tone, at the end of the interview, Paul even mansplains journalism to her: “I ...

In case you’re in need of some rage to fuel your Tuesday, watch this video of an interview Senator Rand Paul did with CNBC Anchor Kelly Evans yesterday. Pressed by Evans on the consequences of his proposal to ...

Katie Hnida is an athlete, advocate, and all-around bad-ass, who was the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I football game.

She has been playing top-tier football for twenty years and has used her platform to speak out about the importance of improving sexism within sport culture. As a sexual assault survivor, Katie has a unique perspective on how to support women on campus and on and off the field.

We were so thrilled to speak with her about her experience for this week’s Feministing Five!

Suzanna Bobadilla: You have been playing football since you were in middle school and you were the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I game. You have touched various aspects ...

Katie Hnida is an athlete, advocate, and all-around bad-ass, who was the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I football game.

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards last year, Viola Davis won the title of outstanding lead actress in a dramaand gave this great speech on diversity and representation in Hollywood, thanking the creators of How to Get Away With Murder for believing that a “sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned, African-American woman who looks like me.”

This year also marked the first time in the SAG awards history that both lead actress titles went to black women, as Uzo Aduba won for outstanding lead actress in a comedy for her role in Orange Is the New Black. Still, there’s always more progress to be made. As Davis said on the red carpet, “We’re in the 21st century now. People ...

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards last year, Viola Davis won the title of outstanding lead actress in a dramaand gave this great speech on diversity and representation in Hollywood, thanking the creators of How to Get ...